~! Change Resolution Without Scaling Quality Up !~

[MonkeyMhz]

We all know the dummys @ R* made it so the quality scales with the resolution which makes things disappear when you go into high resolutions that budget memory far over your card. However I have figured a way to break their system.

 

Heres my proof and theory. When you start the game, when you choose your resolution or when you use -width/-height by command line your setting a resolution for the game and the game scales up the shadows, shaders, everything. Thats the problem.

 

So I thought what if i started in windowed mode and dragged the edge of the window to size it bigger, well. This works, it lets you play the game at a higher resolution to get rid of blurriness and not have everything go missing.

 

Heres what im basing my findings on. ( I used 800x600 so we can see the most drastic difference ).

*FPS drop from 800x600 -> 1680x1050 was only about 3-4 fps, its minimal.

 

Heres GTAIV Running In Windowed 800x600:

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/7043/gtaiv800600eg2.jpg

 

Heres GTAIV Running In 800x600 Fullscreen, Looks terrible when stretched, this screen shot looks worse than it really is but its gross viewing 800x600 on a 1680x1050:

http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/1372/gt...0fullewwkk7.jpg

 

Heres GTAIV in 800x600 but stretched from the windowed corner to my 1680x1050 display:

*OMG! Its sharp and no missing objects/textures!

http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/571/gta...0stretchxj3.jpg

 

Heres GTAIV in 1680x1050, Many of the objects/textures go completely missing and don't even load after longer periods of time:

http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/7647/gt...0missingdy2.jpg

 

Shader Comparison (Stretched vs Actually Scaled):

*When you stretch the window the resoltuion in the options still stays at 800x600 and you can tell reflections and some things look worse than when you actually change the resolution through the game. But changing hte resolution by stretching allows us not to have all the objects go missing, only a small FPS impact. And a more enjoyable game. Im loving this now

 

800x600 Stretched From Window (nothing missing and crispy! lower quality shader though):

http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/2272/shad...0stretchye9.jpg

 

1680x1050 Picked From In game Options (again stuff goes missing in the distance = /):

http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/1943/sh...1050normjv4.jpg

 

 

* You can notice the water shader seems stretched on the 800x600 stretch one.

 

Now go try it out!

Now only if i can find a way to do this through a file or something, so we don't needa start up the game in windowed mode and stretch every time.

Edited December 13, 2008 by MonkeyMhz

[Chevyboy]

Cool stuff if it works for ya.

 

Not exactly sure what your talking about myself (I get what your saying, don't get me wrong) but I run at 1680 x 1050 and there is 0 blur and not 1 object on screen goes missing going from 800x600 to my usual 1680 x 1050.

 

I checked it out a few times just to be sure, nothing changes either time except the resolution of course.

 

However if you or anyone else is having that problem and this works, right on

[MonkeyMhz]

Yea for me its fine up to about 1280x800 then after that stuff starts to go missing or take a long time to load/pop in, but when I run in a lower res and then stretch, no pop in problems, no missing objects, no missing textures.

[techbeam]

thanks for this solution!!! it worked for me aswell! thank you so much.

[Allonzo]

I like ur background, now thats a game

[MonkeyMhz]

Hehe, Yea, this is awesome, i now run the 1400x900 res, only -2 frames from what I had before and everything shows up uber fast. I rarely catch a pop in. I just wish there was another way to automatically do this instead of having to do windowed and manually dragging the screen larger.

[kuci06]

*bumping thread, cause of awesomeness*

 

man, you are a genious

 

so we can run the game on EPIC RES, without consuming as much memory as the game tells us.

 

f*ck yeah

[Moshi]

But how do you stretch the window? I get no arrows!

 

Edit: Ok got it now.

Edited December 13, 2008 by Moshi

[Radzik]

THANK YOU!

 

In my case, game became unbelievably smooth, so I could set textures to HIGH, distance and details to about 50!

I didnt't check it for a longer while to know, how memory leak react for such settings, but everyone with performance problem should try this out for sure!

 

[WilderDK]

sorry to ask, but how do i play in window mode?

 

 

regards

 

 

<-------

[thereisnospoon]

Finally, someone that links imageshack images correctly.

[WilderDK]

sorry to ask, but how do i play in window mode?

 

 

regards

 

 

<-------

anyone know? :-)

 

 

regards

 

 

<-------

[Moshi]

Make a notepad file in GTA IV main directory and name it commandline.txt

 

Then write in the txt file -windowed

 

Close and save.

[WilderDK]

Make a notepad file in GTA IV main directory and name it commandline.txt

 

Then write in the txt file -windowed

 

Close and save.

thx allot m8, worked, cheers.

 

 

regards

 

 

<-------

[GTAMonkey2012]

Its very true that setting lowest and scaling window = same as if it where your actual res.

 

 

[nemesi5]

how do you stretch the windows ?

[t0xiC]

The game does indeed look better whil windowed but how exactly do I stretch the window?

 

Thanks.

[Zharay]

You have to be careful with the mouse and try to get it over the edge. The cursor disappears so its hard to know if your going to stretch it or click inside the window itself. Keep trying and you'll get it.

 

I stumbled on this too when trying out windowed mode and I wanted to move the window, only I stretched it out to a super widescreen resolution. The game automatically scales the FOV for you so no need to worry about having weird view angles.

[MonkeyMhz]

Make a notepad file in GTA IV main directory and name it commandline.txt

 

Then write in the txt file -windowed

 

Close and save.

thx allot m8, worked, cheers.

 

 

regards

 

 

<-------

Yea just make commandline.txt and add

 

-windowed